Quibbles and gripes aside it's safe to say Star Wars fans have had to often put up with worse, with last year's abysmal Lightsaber Duels immediately springing to mind. The biggest flaw of Republic Heroes, other than its generally unlikable source material, is that it feels unfinished. As a result, poor execution mars what could have been a likable child-orientated platformer.

The draw of an irresistible cast of characters - all nicely rendered as endearing retro sprites and stylish anime portraits - should already seal the deal for the core audience, but for everyone else, Cross Edge will seem like nothing more than an obscure curio.

Facebreaker has a seemingly interesting premise but has this tacked onto a very simple beat-em-up gameplay mechanic. It is definitely good fun if you have the camera peripheral and can create your own image to fight with, but is simply not deep enough to deliver a knock-out blow as a standalone game.

The fact remains that, as cutely appealing as Step & Roll can be, it essentially equates to yet another Wii offering that works in some ways but fails to make the grade because of an inability to fulfil the promise of the console's innovative controls.

Consider this reviewer's naïve attitude and eternally hopeful gullibility well and truly slaughtered and replaced by a seething and consuming hatred of anything that gets unceremoniously squeezed out of Hollywood's all-profit-no-quality bunghole.

There's about ten hours of play, much of which is an explanation of the plot, while the rest is a pedestrian and pretty boring romp in terms of game play mechanics, meaning that in the end you'll probably just want to complete the game for completing its sake.

Unfortunately for Empire Earth III, some very bad AI coupled with terrible path finding, a watered down experience, frustrating battles and terrible use of character speech leads me to suggest that you spend your hard earned cash on one of the finer genre examples of late, such as "Age of Empires 3" or "Supreme Commander."

The hardcore strategy game fans amongst us will adore this. It's a true challenge and it will last a very, very long time. However if you're any less than a hardcore fan (and I mean the type of fan who will forego sleep for a week just to play networked Civilization) you might not like this at all.

AvP:R is an action game that fails spectacularly to doing anything exciting with a license built on the promise of exciting action. Instead it comes off feeling like a shell of a game waiting for someone to come along and add the ideas and fun.

Bottom line with Lord of the Rings: Conquest is that it fails on almost every level to re-create the breathtaking scale and impact of its source material. Generic at best, the game's poorly staged battles and uninspired set pieces drag the player on a plodding journey through a world of imagination and invention where both of those vitally important facets have clearly been lost in translation.

Beyond its intriguing battle system, Opoona is simply a monotonous trawl through futuristic cities that never impress, luscious exteriors that are never allowed to impress, gameplay that makes Crazy Frog Racer 2 look impressive, and an anorexic storyline that only succeeds in impressing on the player that the 30 hours required to drag themselves over the finish line will be lost in the pits of gaming hell forever.

Ninja Reflex, whilst being for the most part competently put together, will leave both solo gamers and party players at best cold, and at worst hot under the collar. Pass this title by, silently and unseen in your black pyjamas.

It's all well and good banging on about games that defined childhood gaming experiences, but essentially what does an 80s kid from North London know when he's horribly sunburnt and tipsy from a few sips of Sangria? That was then, and sadly for Capcom Puzzle World, this is now.

Pride, squabbling and calamitous design decisions have ultimately left the game a meagre shadow of its potential self. Its biggest problem, outside of its lacklustre design, is that you and the band have to ask yourselves, in the midst of a music game session, "shall we bother fumbling around the shelves looking for that copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen?"

Fallout's strength has always been found in the moral decisions and branching pathways. There is simply none of that to be had in this episode - it is simply combat. While it can be fun, and possibly challenging with a lower-level character, it's not what Fallout is about. There is no real plot, either - it is background information to the Fallout universe, and that's all.

Somewhere under the flawed exterior there are some good or even great ideas buried inside but these are sadly let down by some unforgivable glitches in the most fundamental parts of the RTS mechanics, problems that are thrown into sharp contrast when experienced through the unforgivably dull campaign mode.

The fact is there's nothing really here. The gameplay is too repetitive, the slow variation in what's asked of you is as minimal as it is uninteresting - you're asked to mix up the order of certain buttons are pressed in order to further progress your character's ability and score, but it simply begs the question...why? When I could be playing anything else, why would I bother with Prey the Stars?

This game may be cheap but it often feels even cheaper. It's not just the simplistic mechanics at work but the rough edges which begin to cut once the initial lubrications of happiness at replaying a classic title have worn away. From icons that shift slots on the UI to redundant information screens being favored over the existence of useful ones, Colonization 2008 feels more like an intern project than a game that should be sold to the public.